The Emergence of the Modern Museum

An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Sources

Jonah Siegel

In 1820 less than a handful of museums existed on the British Isles, and both their form and function were far from what a visitor today would expect. By the beginning of the first world war, not only had over 400 museums been founded in Great Britain, but their place in culture was recognizably close and often identical to the modern one - whether considered in terms of content, forms of display, or modes of access. Although there has never been a single simple and uncontested amount of the character and function of the museum, it is to this period of inception that we may turn for the most urgent and compelling debates as to the nature of institutions that were set up with such effort and expense in England and all over the world. The goal of this anthology is
to allow the reader access to primary sources indicative of the history and development of the museum in the nineteenth century, which is to say, at the moment the modern concept took institutional shape in response to the varied social and cultural debates.

The Emergence of the Modern Museum

An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Sources

Jonah Siegel

Description

What should a museum contain or exclude? Who does a museum hope to attract? What, in fact, is the purpose of a museum? The change from private collection to public museum is a crucial cultural development of the nineteenth century, but one that is bound to raise fundamental questions. The Emergence of the Modern Museum, a unique compendium of original sources, presents a detailed and dynamic account of the development of the institution and its practices during that critical period of inception.

From poignant recollections of visits to stately homes to charged debates about the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles or the establishment of an Indian Museum; from early catalogue entries describing the curiosities discovered by Captain Cook to later ones
organizing human skulls according to Darwinian principles--this volume offers a representative sample of the diverse, contentious, and often moving ideas that have shaped the public museum from its earliest history.

The Emergence of the Modern Museum makes available a wide range of material, including proposals for reform laid out in parliamentary papers, essays by influential theorists and curators, and accounts of the experience of museum-going in the popular press. With its original selections, thematic organization, and careful apparatus, this collection makes newly-accessible the cultural moment that defined the complex institution we know today.

2. Toward Public Art CollectionHouse of Commons / Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Earl of Elgin's Collection (1816)House of Commons / Parliamentary Debate on Purchasing the Elgin Marbles (1816)House of Commons / Parliamentary Debateon Building the National Gallery (April 1832)House of Commons / Parliamentary Debate on Building the National Gallery (July 1832)Anonymous / The British Museum (1836)Anna Jameson / The National Gallery (1842)

3. The Public in the MuseumAnonymous / The British Museum (1832)House of Commons / Report of the Select Committee on Arts and Their Connexion with Manufactures (1836)House of Commons / Report of the Select Committee on National Monuments and Works of Art (1841)House of Commons / Report of the Select Committee on the National Gallery (1850)H. M. Bateman / The Boy Who Breathed on Glass in the British Museum (1916)

Two: Rationalizing the National Collections

4. Art and the National GalleryHouse of Commons / TestimonyBefore the Select Committee on the National Gallery (1853)House of Commons / Testimony Before the National Gallery Site Commission (1857)Gustav Friedrich Waagen / Thoughts on the New Building to Be Erected for the National Gallery of England (1853)

5. Natural History and the British MuseumW. I. Bicknell / The British Museum (1847)Elizabeth Eastlake / The British Museum (1858)House of Commons / The British Museum. Committee Moved For (1859)Richard Owen / On the Extent and Aims of a National Museum of Natural History (1862)[William Henry Flower] / Topographical Description of the Museum and Its Contents, British Museum (Natural History) (1893)

6. Pedagogy: South Kensington and the ProvincesHenry Cole / Extracts from an IntroductoryAddress on the Functions of the Science and Art Department (1857)Anonymous / The South Kensington Museum (1859)Anonymous / Provincial Museums (1866)F. R. Sandford / Report on the System of Circulation of Art Objects on Loan from the South Kensington Museum (1881)

7. Reform and the Psychology of Museum AttendanceJohn Ruskin / On the Present State of Modern Art, with Reference to the Advisable Arrangement of a National Gallery (1867)W. Stanley Jevons / The Use and Abuse of Museums (1883)

8. From Wonders to Signs: Anthropology and ArcheologyDavid Murray / The Modern Museum (1904)John Henry Parker / The Ashmolean Museum: Present State and Prospect (1870)Augustus Henry Lane Fox (Pitt-Rivers) / Catalogue of the Anthropological CollectionLent by Colonel Lane for Exhibition in the Bethnal Green Museum (1874)

9. Exhibiting IndiaAnonymous / The India Museum, Whitehall (1861)J. Forbes Watson / On the Measures Required for the Efficient Working of the India Museum and Library (1874)Lord Curzon et al. / The Future Treatment of the Indian Collection at the Old South Kensington Museum (1909)

Glossary of Frequently Cited Collectors and CollectionsAuthors and SpeakersSuggestions for Further ReadingIndex

The Emergence of the Modern Museum

An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Sources

Jonah Siegel

Author Information

Jonah Siegel is Professor of English, Rutgers University

The Emergence of the Modern Museum

An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century Sources

Jonah Siegel

Reviews and Awards

"This deftly selected anthology provides striking insights into the debates about the formation of museum collections, their social mission, class address, and their relationship to the state and empire in nineteenth-century Britain. These texts, many of them previously inaccessible, reveal in vivid language the discursive and political struggles surrounding the difficult birth of the museum in the world's first industrial nation. Today's museum curators and visitors are the heirs to these controversies--many of them still unresolved."--Tim Barringer, Yale University

"[This] illuminating anthology . . . provide[s] a vivid insight into the social and political forces that shaped museums as cultural venues. A valuable addition to the growing body of literature that documents the great 'Age of the Museum.'"--Brendan Moore, British Museum Magazine